I live in Hong Kong where I'm opening a branch office of my digital marketing firm MWI, which is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. In addition to Forbes, my writing has also been published in Entrepreneur, Fast Company, VentureBeat, Business Insider, TechinAsia, and the South China Morning Post. I focus on entrepreneurship, startups, online marketing, and Asia. Born and raised through high school in Arcadia, California, I also spent two years at college in Idaho, two years in the Amazon as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormons), and 15 years in Utah, first at Brigham Young University studying information systems management, and then working for various startups including a few of my own. In June, 2013 I moved to Hong Kong where I'm opening a branch office of my online marketing firm MWI and learning Cantonese and Mandarin with my wife and two children. My hobbies include skateboarding, triathlon, reading, and blogging. I write about entrepreneurship, startups, learning from success and failure, online marketing, innovation, and anything lean. If you have a question or suggestion, email me. I'm always looking for good ideas and great startups to write about.

Startup Grind Grows To 75 Chapters Worldwide

In February of 2010 Derek Andersen and a friend hosted the first Startup Grind in Andersen’s office in Mountain View, California. Nine people showed up. Since then, Startup Grind has grown to over 75 chapters around the world hosting monthly fireside chats with successful entrepreneurs and investors. More than 30,000 entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs have attended. Events have featured luminaries such as Clayton Christensen, Steve Blank, Jessica Livingston, and founders from Pinterest, Sun Microsystems, Digg, Nest, Intuit, and LinkedIn. In the summer of 2013 it became only the second organization to become a global partner with Google For Entrepreneurs. The Hong Kong chapter, of which I am a co-director, will host it’s first event February 11th, featuring the founders of StartupsHK, Hong Kong’s foremost grassroots organization designed to support startups and entrepreneurs with over 3,000 members.

Clayton Christensen. Image courtesy Startup Grind.

When Andersen started the event he had a simple goal–get smart people with similar values together in a room and wait for good things to happen. But he didn’t want it to stop with Silicon Valley. “I moved around a lot growing up,” Andersen says. “I learned that there are brilliant people all around the world, and that Silicon Valley is not the center of the universe. It has a massive concentration of great entrepreneurs and engineering talent, but every city in the world has something to offer.” In the fall of 2011 an entrepreneur at Startup Grind event approached Andersen and said he loved the community and brand and wanted to do it in Los Angeles. Thus began the process of spreading the model and creating chapters around the US. By January, 2012 there were chapters in Los Angeles and New York City, in addition to Silicon Valley. By August of that same year there were 20 chapters, and Startup Grind reached 50 chapters in over 20 countries a year later in August, 2013. It has added another 25 chapters in the five months since then. In January of this year the organization received over 60 requests to start new chapters, up from just two a year earlier.

When someone wants to start a chapter of Startup Grind, they contact Andersen’s team in Silicon Valley, and an informal interview takes place via phone and email. If approved, the director or co-directors get access to a project management system where they can connect with other chapter directors, access files and informational resources, and communicate directly with Andersen and his team. Andersen’s team and the wider community of directors provide support in the form of know-how, marketing, technology, ticketing, and billing sponsors. The chapter director is responsible for building a team of volunteers to assist with managing local events, which primarily means finding a venue or venues to host the event, recruiting speakers, doing local marketing, and putting on the event itself. The events are paid, and sponsors provide either in-kind or cash contributions. 20% of the ticket sales and sponsorship fees go to cover overhead for Startup Grind’s headquarters, while 80% stays with the local chapter and is used to cover costs related to the events.

Startup Grind also hosts an annual global event in Silicon Valley, taking place at this moment, February 3rd through the 5th, and you can watch a live stream of the event right now. The event features speakers like Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, Dave McClure of 500 Startups, and Ben Horowitz of venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz. Journalists are in attendance from Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, TechCrunch, The Next Web, BBC, ReCode, Time, and The Economist.

I joined Startup Grind because it was somewhat similar to an event series I was already looking to launch in Hong Kong. When the opportunity to join was presented to me, I saw the immediate value it would bring to Hong Kong’s startup community, and that it would be far easier to get off the ground then the venture I was contemplating. In addition, it already had global recognition, which would be helpful when it came to marketing to attendees and sponsors.

At the same time I joined, two other individuals in Hong Kong, Amity Wu and Atin Batra, had contacted Andersen and so we became co-directors of the local chapter. Our shared goal is to promote startups in Hong Kong and help local entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs gain a vision of what is possible. We are in the process of recruiting successful entrepreneurs from all of Southeast Asia, with an occasional outside visitor, to come speak at events and are looking forward to making exciting announcements about our 2014 lineup soon. Although Startup Grind events generally feature a one on one interview with a single entrepreneur, our first event will host the founding panel of StartupsHK. If you’re interested in doing a startup in Hong Kong, please come join us for this special kickoff event.

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